Gone Bad

Gone Bad

Lesley Choyce

James Lorimer & Company Ltd., Publishers
Toronto

Let me tell you about the night we pounded that kid Jeffrey. He had it coming, so you couldn't say it was our fault or anything. At least that's the way I saw it then. People like that, I figured, shouldn't even be allowed on the streets, if you know what I mean. I didn't know much about him. I just knew he was a wannabe rapper. The worst type. A wannabe white rapper. And I hated rap and hip hop, especially by white guys doing it.

Anyway, it was one of those boring nights in Halifax, right? No action, no music, nothing happening. All we had was one bottle to share. And that had been empty for some time now. Ever since my old band broke up, I was finding it a lot harder to keep myself entertained. I mean, it used to be fine as long as I could bash — I'm a drummer, see? We played heavy music. The hardcore stuff. Not that wimpy crap. We played loud, and we played like murder. Whole neighbourhoods moved out when we practised cover tunes from Alice in Chains, The Dwarves, and Goatsnake, or even some of our own stuff. But that was all over thanks to the fact that we could never get along for more than two practices without somebody getting into a fight. It was all good fun, usually nothing more than a few stitches apiece. But the equipment kept getting wrecked and we couldn't afford repairs. So the band was dead and buried.

A drummer without a band is one lost dude. One lost dude leads to another, I guess, which is why I started hanging out again with Jordan, Eric, and Logan. They'd been my buddies from the old days when we were kids and ruled the playground. Nowadays, like me, these guys disliked boring scenes. If nothing was happening, we'd make it happen. Like this night in front of the library on Spring Garden Road.

It started out harmless enough. Logan suggested we have a contest to see who could hit the Winston Whatsisname statue with a big gob of spit from the farthest away. Mild entertainment, I admit. But it was cool because it grossed out a bunch of classy looking, uptight women who were walking by. Eric missed his shot and nearly landed a wad on the back of one of them. It splatted down on the sidewalk beside her. She turned and gave us all a look that said she thought we were disgusting. I smiled.

Well, Eric won the spitting contest but not before he “accidentally” caught some guy in a suit with a big gob on the man's cheek. Buddy came after Eric but then backed off when he saw Big Jordan and me there too. Too bad 'cause we could have wasted him.

Like I say, it was a slow night. I had my drumsticks in my back pocket. They're good to have around for some practise. Or to shove up somebody's nose if need be. It was maybe nine o'clock at night. The moon was shining down on that great big goober that Eric had planted on Winston Whatsisname's ass from maybe two metres away.

Jordan was feeling creative so he kicked over the trash can and started to spread the contents around the lawn. Jordan is not what you call friendly to the environment.

Of course people were staring, but they were all too wimped to stand up to us. That's how we knew we were in control.

Since there was nothing much for me to do, I finished emptying the trash can, set it upside down, and got out my sticks. I got a decent enough sound going, and the boys started to join in. Logan gave it his best air guitar, his scraggly black hair hanging down over his face. Eric and Jordan launched into singing their gross-out version of “Nazis in Love.”

A couple of little geeks — seventh-graders, I'd guess — stopped to watch us. We stopped playing. Logan, who I think had some kind of merit badge in hassling little kids, asked them if they had any money.

“Pick on somebody your own size,” I warned him.

“Shut up, Cody,” Logan snapped and then turned back to the two kids. “You just watched the show. Now you gotta pay.”

The kids were starting to move away.

“Not so fast,” Jordan said. Big Jordan must have looked like a UFC fighter hovering over them with his big hulk of nastiness.

The seventh-graders dug deep in their pockets and handed over a couple of bucks. Logan took the money and pushed them away.

“We let
'
em off easy,” he said. Logan had wanted to be a bully ever since he was a little kid, but he was always too skinny to be a serious threat. Now he was sixteen. He was still skinny. But he had a really sinister look to him that made him as scary as Jordan, who depended on size and sheer ugliness for his career.

The kids ran off down the street into the darkness. We knew they wouldn't tell a soul for fear we'd get back at them. But no harm was done. Chalk it up to education.

After that, Eric, Jordan, and Logan took a break. They were sitting on the steps of the library when this guy Jeffrey showed up. I'd seen him around before, freestyling on the streets. I was still practising drums on the trash can when he stopped and looked at us. Just what I needed. The dude actually thought he was going to rap along with what we were doing.

At first, I tried to ignore him but he just kept at it — I couldn't even make out what the hell he was saying. It was pretty annoying, let me tell you.

My buddies, however, found this entertaining.

“Lose it,” Eric said, walking up behind him.

The guy tried to laugh. He didn't get it.

“Who said you could be here?” Logan asked.

By now Jordan and Eric were leaning over him and Logan was breathing down his neck. I noticed the guy had on a really cool watch. “Hey, sorry,” he said finally. “I guess I'll just move on.”

“Move on is right,” I said. I didn't want to be seen with this guy. People might get the wrong idea. I figured I had an image to maintain.

“Not so fast.” Jordan had his arms crossed against his chest and stood there like some hallway monitor from hell.

I could see that the time had come to get serious. I gave a good drum roll on the trash can. The fun was about to begin. “You know, that stuff you do on the street, it really sucks. That's not music,” I told the guy. “That's bullshit.”

With that, Eric knocked into the back of the guy's legs, making him topple. Jordan got in the first punch. Then Logan pulled him away and said, “Let me at him.”

Logan was still getting back for all the years he'd been beat up on the schoolyard, so he hit the hardest in the most sensitive places.

By now Jeffrey was lying on the sidewalk. Like an idiot, he wasn't trying to cover his face. All we had to do was just stand there and get in some good kicks. Black army boots with steel toes are excellent weapons for this sort of street cleaning.

“Can you believe this loser?” Jordan said to me. This was my signal.

The kid was already on the ground — grounded as we would say. His face was bloody and he was hurt. He deserved it for trying to hang out with us. I knew I couldn't just stand there and do nothing. Besides, the kid had it coming. So I planted a solid kick straight into his gut and heard him let go with a choking, gurgling sound. He began spitting up blood.

We all laughed.

Somebody yelled to stop. I realized then that there were people watching us from a distance. I turned but couldn't get a fix on anything except a few shadowy figures. They must have been too scared to get any closer. I saw somebody out on Spring Garden Road waving his arms in the traffic.

Seconds later I heard the police siren. Jordan broke into a big grin. Logan looked a little worried. Eric wouldn't leave without a finale so he spit on the guy and then let out a whoop.

Eric was already breaking into a run toward Grafton Street. Jordan and Logan weren't far behind him. I gave one last look at the sorry bastard crumpled on the ground. I knew the longer I stayed, the more respect the guys would owe me. I was ready to give him one good last kick when he stuck up his arm to try to stop me.

His watch caught my eye. Yeah. I grabbed for it and ripped it off his wrist, nearly wrenching his arm out of its socket.

He tried to pull back, tried to say something but it wouldn't have mattered. It was going to be great little souvenir. I caught the look on his face — fear and pain all rolled into one. Maybe somebody else right then would have felt bad. But not me. I just smiled and ran like hell to catch up with my boys.

I had a nice little adrenalin buzz going just then. Man, I felt like I was on top of the world.

I wore the watch to school the next day. Every time Jordan or one of my boys saw it, they just kind of smiled. I was feeling pretty good about myself when I ran into Kelsey, the girl of my dreams.

There is no other girl in school like Kelsey. She is like something out of my imagination: a real beauty but tough as tread on the front wheel of a Harley. She has a Zelda haircut and wears tight black jeans. And of course there is the standard labret piercing, and sometimes she even wears those nerdy but oh-so-sexy glasses. Kelsey has problems at home. She'd lived on the street for a while but then ended up back home and back in school.

I'd never really lived on the street but I had problems at home too. (Hey, who doesn't?) My father used to push around both me and my mother when I was young. He stopped doing it when I started giving him some of it back. Technically I still lived at home, but I was hardly ever there. I'd stay out as late as I could or crash at someone else's house. I was doing okay, though.

Kelsey had a tough side but she didn't drink or do drugs. Guess that was 'cause one of her street friends went from booze to pills and then overdosed. So she keeps it pretty clean that way. But if someone pisses her off, look out. One time Mr. Lillman gave her a hard time over her opinion about having condom machines in the washrooms. Lillman thought school was no place to “promote promiscuity” — as he called it. Right in front of the class, Kelsey gave this little speech about why condoms should be available in school. She ended by calling Lillman a “prune-head.”

Oh, the other thing about Kelsey is that she sings and plays keyboard. Like me, she'd lost her band. In her case, it happened when she moved out of her house. By the time she came back home, her band had found a new keyboard player as well as a new image. They'd moved into music that was way too sappy for her.

Like I was saying, I was feeling pretty good about last night so I thought I should try to make use of my luck. “Yo, Kelsey,” I said. “I'm still haunted by you.”

She turned to look at me from behind her locker door. Her eyes were like cold, blue fire. “Haunted?”

“You know.”

“I should take this as a compliment?”

“Yeah.”

“Well then, thanks.” She actually smiled at me, then slammed her locker door hard and began to walk away.

“Wait, I gotta tell you about what happened last night.”

“I'm listening,” she said as she began walking away from me. I could tell that here was a woman worth the effort. Very cool. I'd have to really impress her if I wanted to make a play. So I cleared my throat and told her the story.

She listened with her eyes straight ahead as we walked. People parted as we made our way through the school. I was trying to make myself sound like some kind of hero for what we did. I finished my story by saying, “I think we really made a statement.”

Kelsey stopped in her tracks. She looked dead at me with those gorgeous, angry eyes. “You're sick,” she said. “Get out of my face.” And then she disappeared into a classroom and slammed the door.

I was puzzled. What's wrong with girls these days? I asked myself. I slinked off to the stairwell and sat down underneath the first-floor stairs to wait for her class to end. I felt like a wounded animal.

When the bell rang, I was there.

“What did I do wrong?” I asked her. “The guy had it coming.”

“What are you? The judge and the executioner? Who made you God?”

The girl had a way with language. Nobody could put me down the way she did. But I had to admit I admired her for that. She wasn't afraid of me. She wasn't afraid of anybody. I wouldn't give up. Turn on the charm. Change the subject, I decided.

“How is your music going? Write any new songs?”

“Music's going good. I've been jamming with Alex,” she said matter-of-factly. She could tell she wasn't going to shake me off. “Yeah, I wrote a new song. It's about not fitting in.”

“I can relate to that.”

“I thought you couldn't stand people who don't fit in, people who are different from you.”

“Yeah, well, that's different.”

“Is it? Cody, how many brain cells do you figure you are operating on at any given time of the day? Five, maybe six, tops? You're a complete idiot who can't tolerate anybody who's into different music or just different from you.”

“So?”

“So it's the end of discussion.”

Maybe I should have taken the brain cell thing as a direct insult. But I just figured this was Kelsey's style. I was sure that deep down she really liked me. If I could only get her to spend some time with me, I knew we could make it work.

“I'll change,” I said. The grin on my face must have given away my sincerity, though.

“Into what?”

“Anything you want me to be,” I said, but I was giggling. “Wait. Don't walk away. Last time we talked, you promised we could do some music together some time.”

“I lied.”

“You can't do this to me. Look, I haven't had a band for six months. I need inspiration. You're it. When can we get together?”

“I told you, I'm working on some stuff with Alex. I don't know if I'd have time.”

“Alex is a dork.”

“His IQ is probably double yours.”

“So what does that give him, twelve brain cells?”

She laughed. I'd finally broke through.

“Who are you using for drums?” I asked.

“We run a digital drum track. We don't need a drummer. Alex has one of the best rigs on the market.”

It was the ultimate insult. “Oh man, you can't be serious!”

Kelsey could tell she'd hit a nerve. “You do have feelings.”

I shrugged. What was a guy supposed to say to that?

“What's so important about a live drummer?”

“Well, music is supposed to have feeling, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And a machine can't feel the music like me. When I play drums, I get involved.”

“I've heard you play. You're good.”

I felt like a superstar. “I know.”

“But you're not modest.”

“I could be if you want me to be.”

I was learning about women. That last line did the trick.

“Would you be cool if I asked you over to jam with Alex and me?” Kelsey asked.

“Like ice.”

“But would you be nice to Alex? He's an awesome guitar player, you know.”

“I'll treat him with the highest respect,” I lied. I hated guys like Alex — clean cut, good grades, student council. I didn't like the way Kelsey talked about him, but I knew I could probably make him look bad in front of her. I was talented at stuff like that. It was good that Kelsey couldn't read my mind.

“Okay. If you promise to go very easy, we'll give it a try. Today after school in the garage at my house.”

“I'll be there.”

“Bring your drums.”

“Oh yeah. That too.”